Conversations about the need for more comprehensive maternity leave policies seem to rarely include solutions to the issues facing pregnant and parenting students, despite the fact that they are less likely to finish high school than their peers and are more likely to stay in poverty as they struggle to support their family.

This piece is published in collaboration with Echoing Ida, a Forward Together project.

Sweeping federal family leave legislation, an economic issue that gained new life when President Obama acknowledged its significance during this year’s State of the Union address, has both short- and long-term benefits for individuals, families, and society as a whole. Those benefits include better health outcomes for both parents and children.

Conversations about the need for more comprehensive maternity leave policies, however, rarely seem to include solutions to the issues facing pregnant and parenting students, despite the fact that they are at great risk of staying in poverty because of how little support teen parents receive from the people in their communities and their lives.

For example, even though pregnant and parenting teens have the right to equal educational opportunity under Title IX, which allows for excused absences and medical leave during a pregnancy, among other things, many students are unaware of their rights, school faculty and staff do not inform them of those rights, and schools do a poor job of establishing comprehensive policies that go beyond addressing the on-paper needs of students who are pregnant or parenting.

If advocates truly want to improve outcomes for new moms and dads, they would also help elevate the needs of pregnant and parenting teens, instead of allowing the system to continue punishing young adults for making their own reproductive decisions.

Pregnant and parenting students face significant barriers that often are overlooked or discounted by schoolteachers and other people in their lives. They have to juggle keeping on top of their schoolwork with attending school in unsafe learning environments due to things like bullying, societal stigma, and shame. Pregnant teens have their own set of unique needs, which vary from person to person but often include constant bathroom breaks, snacking in between meals, and pregnancy-related doctor’s appointments.

Excused absences for such appointments, along with frequent breaks during the school day, while protected under Title IX, are not without consequences at schools with staunch rules. Some schools have been called out for zero-tolerance teen pregnancy policies; teens have been expelled after being forced to take a pregnancy test.

Once the parent gives birth to their child, they will spend many late nights up with their newborn, while also coping with engorged, sore breasts in school, whether or not they decide to breastfeed, with virtually no access to a safe, clean space should they need to pump breast milk. And that’s not to mention the amount of time and resources required to make and keep safe and affordable child-care arrangements.

The limited number of allowed absences run out quickly for new parents before they suffer the consequences of academic pushout and/or expulsion. Comprehensive maternity leave policies for pregnant and parenting teens are needed to support academic attainment.

As Natasha Vianna explained in a 2013 RH Reality Check article, her teacher went to great lengths to humiliate her in class after she missed a school day to take her daughter, who was born with a condition that required several doctor’s visits early on, to a necessary appointment. Because Vianna missed a quiz, her teacher demanded that she come back after school to make up the work. But the teacher didn’t stop there: In front of the entire class, she went on to “remind” Vianna that she “chose to become a mom in high school,” and therefore she wouldn’t get “special treatment.”

“School was hell for me,” wrote Vianna. “When the teachers don’t want to see you succeed, you feel as if your mere presence in the school is unwanted.”

New research shows that these types of experiences for pregnant and parenting teens are not uncommon. A recent report from the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies found that pregnant and parenting female teens in high school are often pushed out by school faculty and staff for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to stigmatization, lack of child care, strict attendance policies, unsafe campuses (resulting from school fights, forceful school resources officers, and bullying, among other reasons), and ill-equipped administrators.

Pregnant and parenting teens say that becoming pregnant and having their children increased their desire to continue and complete their education. However, educational pushout makes this a near-impossible goal to achieve.

This form of educational pushout creates a pipeline from school to deeper poverty for pregnant and parenting teens and their families. Being that educational attainment has been cited as one of the best ways to overcome poverty, and that poverty is one of the leading causes of teenage pregnancy, educational pushout has long-lasting effects for new parents, their children, and society at large.

Educational pushout perpetuates the cycle of poverty.

Thankfully there are some nonprofits and educational programs that see the unique needs of teen pregnant and parenting students and have established targeted and holistic approaches to addressing these needs. There’s Alley’s House, a Dallas-based nonprofit that provides pregnant and parenting students alternative educational services, with specialized attendance policies, and other programs designed to influence their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. And New Mexico Graduation, Reality, and Dual-Role Skills (New Mexico GRADS) has a ten-point curriculum that, like Alley’s House, tackles each of the various barriers pregnant and parenting teens will face.

And then, of course, there’s legislation. New Mexico’s parental leave law, which was signed by Gov. Susana Martinez in 2013, seeks to counter this type of systemic discrimination of pregnant and parenting teens by creating a state-level mandate that allows both male and female parents additional absences from school without being expelled. Even though Title IX protects a pregnant and parenting student’s right to an education, the law goes so far as to require “public schools to provide a copy of the parenting and student absence policies to all students in middle, junior high, or high schools.”

Maternity leave laws for pregnant and parenting teens help ensure they are able to stay in school, graduate, and pursue higher education, like in the case of Karina Rodriguez. Rodriguez’s son had health problems early on, which meant she had to be absent from classes to take him to necessary appointments. As a result, the school told Rodriguez she was going to be disenrolled from school because she had missed too many school days. Fortunately, under New Mexico’s parental leave law, she was able to take advantage of the extended amount of absences allotted to her and stay in school. She has since graduated high school and is enrolled at Central New Mexico Community College.

Maternity leave laws for teenage parents provide additional time for the new parent to establish healthy school-work-life balance early on, which could help reduce the disproportionately high rate of postpartum depression that pregnant and parenting teens experience.

We also saw legislators in Massachusetts introduce HB 525 in 2014, which would allow teen parents to take family leave without educational punishment and would establish liaisons who would work with parenting students to ensure they graduate on time. And at the national level, Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Jared Polis (D-CO) introduced the Pregnant and Parenting Students Access to Education Act in 2013. Widely supported by advocates, the act called for a federal policy requiring states to support pregnant and parenting teens while they meet their education and parenting duties.

But introducing legislation isn’t enough.

As President Obama said during his State of the Union address, “It’s time we stop treating child care as a side issue … and treat it like the national economic priority that it is for all of us.” Holding teen parents behind hurts our economy. Moreover, students shouldn’t be pushed out, stressed out, or punished for wanting to pursue an education while parenting.

The cycle of poverty among teenage families must end. It’s up to all of us to ensure the needs of teenage parents are acknowledged in conversations about maternity leave policy.

A lawsuit filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union against Missouri’s Ferguson-Florissant School District in federal court alleges that the system to elect school board members locks Black voters out of the process.

According to the complaint, which was brought on behalf of the Missouri NAACP and some Black residents, the district’s at-large system of electing school board members violates the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting strength.

The complaint seeks to replace the at-large system with a system in which school board members are elected from single-member districts.

Rather than school board candidates running for designated seats, at-large elections like the one challenged in the ACLU’s complaint typically allow all candidates to run against one another for a number of seats, with the highest vote-getters winning the election.

Critics of at-large elections note that they often result in racially and politically homogenous elected bodies. It’s for this reason that courts frequently strike down at-large voting systems under the Voting Rights Act for failing to provide communities of color with fair representation.

It’s that failure to provide the Ferguson area’s Black community with fair representation on its school board that forms the foundation of the ACLU’s lawsuit. The complaint details the history of racial segregation in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, which was created pursuant to a 1975 desegregation order that extended the district through numerous municipalities in the surrounding area, and then explains how the school board election process has been gamed to dilute Black influence and participation on the board.

The desegregation order that created the Ferguson-Florissant School District required that two seats on the then-six-member Ferguson School Board be declared vacant, to be replaced by designees of the boards of the annexed districts that served Black students, according to the complaint.

The four remaining members were then to draw lots to determine the length of their terms in office to create staggered elections for an “initial period of stable governance for the new district” as explained in the complaint.

Today, according to the complaint, the Ferguson-Florissant School Board is composed of seven members, each serving for three years. The members of the board serve staggered terms, which means each year either two or three of the seven board seats are up for election. Those elections are held at-large and take place in April of each year.

The last at-large election for three seats on the school board was held on April 8, 2014, according to the complaint.

Despite the fact that Blacks are almost half of the school district’s population and compose a substantial majority of its students, there has never had adequate representation of Blacks on the school board. The Ferguson-Florissant School Board has only one Black member, and although in 2011, 2012, and 2013, all seven board seats were up for election in that three-year span, not a single Black candidate who ran for office during that time was elected, according to the complaint.

“The current system locks out African-American voters. It dilutes the voting power of the African-American community and severely undermines their voice in the political process,” Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement following filing the lawsuit.

The Ferguson-Florissant School Board voting practices and procedures such as staggered terms for board members, which place minority voters at a severe disadvantage by limiting the number of seats in any election, enhances the opportunity for discrimination against Black voters. School board elections are also held in April rather than November, which generally produces lower Black voter turnout, making it more difficult to elect their preferred candidates, the complaint alleges.

Other factors play into the systemic discrimination against Blacks in the Ferguson-Florissant School District as well, the complaint alleges. This includes the fact that the the local teachers’ union, the Ferguson-Florissant National Education Association, consistently endorses white candidates.

A failure to endorse Black candidates is not the only evidence of racial discrimination by the school board, according to the complaint. The lawsuit details a 2013 incident in which the board suspended and subsequently removed without any public explanation the district’s first Black school superintendent over the vigorous objections of Black parents, including one of the plaintiffs in the ACLU’s lawsuit, Redditt Hudson.

Hudson, a former St. Louis police officer who lives in Florissant with his wife and two daughters, both of whom are students in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, says it is this systemic failure to represent the interests of the Black community that inspired him to be a part of the lawsuit.

“We’ve seen African-Americans excluded from making decisions that affect our children,” said Hudson, who works for the NAACP. “We need to be able to advocate for an education that will put our kids first and not political agendas.”

The lawsuit seeks to have the court declare that Ferguson-Florissant’s at-large method of electing members to the Board of Education during the month of April violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and to block future elections in the district under the current at-large method of election.

The lawsuit also seeks an order implementing an election system for the Ferguson-Florissant School Board that complies with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, though that system is not specifically detailed in the compliant.

The Ferguson-Florissant School District has not yet responded to the lawsuit.

Students and medical professionals, for the first time, can go online for formal training on abortion care, thanks to a new class offered through the University of California, San Francisco.

The course, titled “Abortion: Quality Care and Public Health Implications,” offered through a massive open online course (MOOC), walks students through all things abortion, from its history and legalization in the United States, to clinical aspects of later abortions, to the relationship between early pregnancy loss and abortion care.

More than 3,000 people are already registered for the class.

Jody Steinauer, an associate professor at UCSF and course instructor, explains on the course’s website that it seeks to “fill in the gaps left by [abortion’s] exclusions from mainstream curricula in health professions.”

Abortion is one of the most common medical procedures performed in the United States, but access to care is limited by restrictive legislation and a lack of providers. Half of all pregnancies are unintended, and about half of the women facing an unintended pregnancy will get an abortion. In 2005, 1.2 million abortions were performed, compared with just 341,000 appendectomies, 398,000 gallbladder removals, and 575,000 hysterectomies.

A decrease in the number of abortion providers has in no small part compounded the obstacles to care created by restrictive legislation. The number of abortion providers has decreased upwards of 15 percent over the past two decades, and in 2011, though 97 percent of OB-GYNs had patients seeking abortion, only 14 percent could offer the service themselves.

Most women of reproductive age now live in states hostile to abortion rights, according to Medical Students for Choice.

A lack of educational opportunities is at least partly to blame for the provider shortage, and medical professionals say that the stigma associated with abortion is carried over into the classroom, deterring potential providers from choosing a profession mired in controversy, harassment, and violence.

A 2005 study found that one in four OB-GYN students in their third year had no formal education on abortion. Thirty-two percent of medical schools offer a single lecture on abortion during clinical years, and clinical experience in abortion services is not integrated into student education as it is for other types of services.

Dr. Eve Espey, chair of the OB-GYN department at University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine, told RH Reality Check that there is so much stigma around abortion, that even at educational institutions “people whisper the word abortion. People rarely talk about it, much less learn about it.”

“[The] polarization of public opinion in the abortion debate is reflected in the curricula of medical schools,” Espey said in a phone interview.

Steinauer’s class aims to fill the gap in abortion education, and Espey said that the class will “de-stigmatize abortion by mainstreaming it.”

“It will really take abortion out of this moral dimension and place it squarely in the medical and public health domain,” which will help students see it as a health care issue, she said.

“I think that if we can inspire even a small portion of the people who take the course to take steps in their communities to increase access to safe abortion and decrease stigma about abortion, then we have been totally successful,” Steinauer said in an interview with the Daily Beast.

Texas Republicans met in Fort Worth last week for their biannual convention, approving a 2014 platform that moves the party further rightward. According to the platform’s draft language, delegates returned to a hardline anti-immigrant stance that rescinds a 2012 “Texas Solution” that had included a guest worker program, and endorsed “reparative” therapy for people “seeking escape from the homosexual lifestyle.” The platform draft also includes a “thank you” to Texas legislators for “passing strong women’s health and pro-life legislation,” a reference to the state’s new omnibus anti-abortion bill that in September is expected to shutter all but six of Texas’ legal abortion facilities.

Critics of the new platform worry that it moves the Texas Republican Party not only rightward but backward, and away from the interests of groups that the party will need on its side in the coming years as Texas becomes more and more racially and culturally diverse, and as more and more Texans, especially young people, come to support same-sex marriage.

A representative for Texans for Sensible Immigration Policy told TWC Austin News that the 2014 platform “will absolutely convince our Hispanic voters that we’re the party that wants to deport their mothers and their grandmothers.” And after the Republican delegates solidified language endorsing “reparative therapy,” a representative for the gay conservative organization Metroplex Republicans said that his group was “here today to try to pull the party into the future,” to no avail.

After the party delegates officially voted to rescind their “Texas Solution” to immigration reform in favor of a more militarized, Tea Party-style take on border security, one supporter cheered: “We won. They lost.”

That adversarial, us-versus-them mentality seems to pervade the entirety of the party’s 2014 platform, a document unabashed in its disdain for immigrants and gay and lesbian Texans, which has no room for advocates of increased gun regulation and which supports “a women’s [sic] right to choose” only those options which may be left after the wholesale “reversal of Roe v. Wade.”

The document’s message is clear: You’re either for the Texas Republican Party, or you’re against the Texas Republican Party. You win, or you lose. It is, in many ways, the perfect platform for a party that has nominated Tea Party darling state Sen. Dan Patrick as its candidate for Lt. Governor and Ted Nugent’s buddy, attorney general Greg Abbott, as its gubernatorial candidate.

Issue-by-issue, the platform leaves little room for debate or nuance on issues ranging from reproductive rights to economic policy to education.

On abortion: Texas Republicans “are resolute in our support of the reversal of Roe v. Wade,” and they call for complete fetal “personhood,” detailing steps toward their “final goal of total constitutional rights for the unborn child.” This line of legal thinking, which situates a fetus as a wholly separate entity from a pregnant person, can provide the “basis for arresting women, locking them up, and forcing them to submit to medical interventions, including surgery,” according to a 2013 study by National Advocates for Pregnant Women, published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

On foster care: The platform is silent on the state’s tragically underfunded child welfare system, but for a call to end “bureaucratic prohibitions on corporal discipline” in foster homes. This despite the fact that, according to a Texas Observer investigation, “more than one in 20 children killed by abuse or neglect in Texas in the past five years died while in state custody.” In the 2012 fiscal year, 14 children died of abuse or neglect while in state custody—yet the Texas Republican Party believes foster parents are too limited in their legal ability to punish their wards with physical pain.

On LGBTQ rights: Gay Republicans won a small victory in this year’s platform, finally convincing their party to scratch decades-old language stating that “practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit.” But the 2014 platform replaces that language with equally discriminatory and damaging mandates: “Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable alternative lifestyle, in public policy, nor should family be redefined to include homosexual couples.” The 2014 platform also seeks to deny the ability of same-sex couples to adopt foster children, and recognizes “the legitimacy and value of counseling which offers reparative therapy and treatment to patients who are seeking to escape from the homosexual lifestyle.”

On climate change: The platform situates climate change not as a demonstrable reality—according to 97 percent of climate scientists—but as a vast liberal conspiracy, calling it a “political agenda which attempts to control every aspect of our lives.”

On education: The 2014 platform calls for “reducing taxpayer funding to all levels of education institutions” and makes clear its opposition to “national or international core curricula” like Common Core or CSCOPE. It also flip-flopped from its 2012 position opposing “the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs,” instead encouraging “the teaching of critical thinking skills, including logic, rhetoric and analytical sciences starting at an early age,” or at least the ones that don’t “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

On the federal government: Texas Republicans would like to see state senators elected not by Texas voters but by the state legislature, the Federal Reserve abolished, and the repeal of the federal hate-crimes law.

On the workplace: While the 2014 platform, like its precursors, calls for a total repeal of federal minimum wage laws and urges the state legislature to “resist making Workers’ Compensation mandatory for all Texas employers,” it’s notably silent on the issue of equal pay, despite the fact that the GOP gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott has, like Gov. Rick Perry, strongly opposed new legislation that would make it easier for Texans to bring suit against employers they say engage in gender-based pay discrimination.

On race: The Texas Republican Party opposes “any form of reparation,” as well as affirmative action, which it says “reintroduces race as a divisive force in American life.”

On immigration: Echoing Lt. Governor nominee Dan Patrick’s preferred “illegal invasion” language, and tying in with gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott’s perspective that Texas’ border region with Mexico is a “third world,” the 2014 GOP platform emphasizes that “the U.S. Border must be secured immediately!” It calls for Congress to develop a visa program that “does not provide amnesty, does not cause mass deportation and does not provide a pathway to citizenship but does not preclude existing pathways.” Visa applicants would also be required waive their rights to “apply for financial assistance from public entitlement programs.”

On international law: Just in case the federal government or the state legislature decides to throw out the constitution and/or the entirety of the American legal system: “We also urge the Texas Legislature and the U.S. Congress to enact legislation prohibiting any judicial jurisdiction from allowing any substitute or parallel system of Law, specifically foreign Law (including Sharia Law), which is not in accordance with the U.S. or Texas Constitutions.”

On Benghazi: Because of course: “We call for Congress to act on the Benghazi cover up and the failure to protect American Citizens including U.S. military personnel by the Obama Administration.”

The platform is not officially binding, but acts as a roadmap for Republican leaders to follow over the next two years. And while the platform covers a wide range of issues, it situates one in particular as taking precedence over all others: legislation aimed at the further deregulation of guns and gun ownership, according to a draft resolution “in support of prioritizing constitutional carry legislation” necessary to “remove restrictions on Texans’ right to own and bear arms.”

If Texas Republicans fare well at the polls this November, this is a roadmap that could make for one heck of a well-armed journey.

I asked several lawyer colleagues if they knew of other instances in which a whole occupational category was banned by law from volunteering in schools. They did not. Indeed, as far as I can tell, only sex offenders as a class are de facto banned from school grounds.

No school district, employee or agent thereof, or educational service provider contracting with such school district shall provide abortion services. No school district shall permit any person or entity to offer, sponsor or otherwise furnish in any manner any course materials or instruction relating to human sexuality or sexually transmitted diseases if such person or entity is an abortion services provider, or an employee, agent or volunteer of an abortion services provider.

The above provision is contained in a nearly 50-page bill that recently went into effect in Kansas. (A judge temporarily blocked two other provisions of the law, but allowed this one to remain.)

To be sure, the relentless assault on abortion that we are currently seeing in other state legislatures—Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina, among others—are far more consequential in the short run. Ambulatory surgical center (ASC) and hospital admitting privilege requirements really do have the capacity to shut down clinics. Should the Texas bill currently being considered become law—as is likely, despite the heroic efforts of the thousands of orange-shirters gathered at the capitol—the number of Texas abortion facilities would go from 47 to five in that huge state. Already, due to a similar ASC requirement, earlier rammed through the Pennsylvania legislature as a cynical response to the Gosnell scandal, a number of clinics in Pennsylvania have closed. And the bans on abortions after 20 weeks, adopted by a number of states, will affect a relatively small number of women, but typically those in desperate medical and/or social condition.

But other provisions of abortion legislation, of which the Kansas one cited above is a prime example, do a different kind of damage. They further the stigmatization and marginalization of abortion providers by making clear that these individuals are not welcome in that most central of community institutions: the schools. It is not just participation in sex education from which Kansas providers are barred. As Stephanie Toti, senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is challenging this law, told me, “This is unprecedented discrimination against abortion providers. … The prohibition on providers serving as ‘agents’ of a school district has the effect of barring them from serving as chaperones on field trips and engaging in most other volunteer activities.”

So abortion providers are at this moment banned from Kansas schools—and supposedly this will promote the safety of adult women getting abortions, as is the typical sanctimonious rationalization of the various laws we are seeing.

I asked several lawyer colleagues if they knew of other instances in which a whole occupational category was banned by law from volunteering in schools. They did not. Indeed, as far as I can tell, only sex offenders as a class are de facto banned from school grounds.

This shocking ban on abortion providers’ involvement in the schools leads me to recollect other instances I have encountered of attempts to isolate this group and keep them from community involvement. I think of a provider I’ve written about who I call Bill Swinton (not his real name), a family medicine doctor in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. He was deeply involved in both his church and his community, and served for three terms on the local school board. But he was defeated for a fourth term in the late 1980s, as the abortion wars intensified; needless to say, his status as a provider was the key factor in his defeat. I think as well of another doctor I’ve written about named Susan Golden (also not her real name), in a town in the Midwest, who integrated abortion provision into her family medicine practice. When she and her partner planned to take part in a community health fair, presenting on the care of newborns, the entire event was abruptly cancelled by the anti-abortion owner of the facility where the fair had been scheduled to take place.

As disturbing as these incidents were, they did not have the force, or the legitimization, of law. The Kansas provision does—and as such, takes the stigmatization of abortion providers to a new level.

Assuming the Kansas law, including this provision, is not overturned, we can only speculate as to what effects it might have. Speaking personally, I remember as a child the enormous pride I felt when my father, a cardiologist, came to my elementary school with his microscope and showed the class wondrous things. As a working mother, I recall how much I valued occasional volunteer stints in my daughters’ schools, getting to know both their classmates and other parents. It is very disturbing to contemplate that providers and their children will be deprived of these experiences. And it is equally disturbing to contemplate the messages that others in the community will receive from such a ban.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/07/11/stigma-on-steroids-on-kansas-banning-abortion-providers-from-schools/feed/17Journey of a Young Mamahttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/05/10/journey-of-a-young-mama/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=journey-of-a-young-mama
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/05/10/journey-of-a-young-mama/#commentsFri, 10 May 2013 20:07:29 +0000http://rhrealitycheck.org/?p=19232

This Mother’s Day, I ask you to think about helping a young mom get the support and services she needs.

My daughter inspired me to continue doing what I had always loved to do.

This story begins 14 years ago. I almost completed high school in Los Angeles in 1996. But I was struggling. I was very rebellious, I didn’t get along with my mother’s boyfriend, and at 17 I thought I knew everything. My father lived in Florida and was worried about me. I wanted to leave my home at any cost, especially because of my mom’s boyfriend. I even joined and then dodged the Navy!

Later that year the police and my parents made me return home after 2 days of living with my much older boyfriend. After being remanded to my father’s custody in Florida, I had a difficult and isolating junior year. In Florida I failed a couple of my classes because of lack of support and because I went through extreme culture shock.

When I returned to California for my senior year, I was so behind in my classes that taking Saturday school and summer sessions did not save me. I ended up needing one more class, but it would be three years before I was able to make up those credits in continuation school.

By then I was 20 years old, eight months pregnant, and working two jobs, while my boyfriend had zero jobs! I finally got my diploma through writing about my community involvement in Los Angeles. My daughter Sienna was born in 1999, the same year that Toyota released a minivan of the same name. At 21, I was too cool for a minivan, though in need, and had no driver’s license anyway. Again, I had two jobs, one working as a teacher’s aide for the Los Angeles Unified School District in a special education program, and the other, an evening job, working for a jeweler. Two jobs because I needed the extra income. But is it “extra” when you don’t make enough with just one job and you have a baby?

Higher education was not a priority, as I was not sure about what I wanted to study. It was hard to stay up studying, and then get up to play with my baby girl, but I enjoyed every minute. I had to return to work when she was six weeks old. I was lucky to find a nice babysitter who did not charge too much. This was huge because there wasn’t a childcare program for us. We got by.

Sienna’s dad finally found work, and bills were just barely getting paid. He found work as a bike messenger downtown and helped me with Sienna when he was home. But by the time Sienna was a year old, her dad and I had broken up. I had to navigate through the child support system and move around for a while before we found our way.

Looking back on this journey, my daughter inspired me to continue doing what I had always loved. This included learning about health and the environment as it relates to women, and starting in 2007 becoming very involved with California Latinas for Reproductive Justice.

I think of myself as a life-long learner, and I know that women hold families together. I’ve grown so much since having my first daughter 14 years ago. Since then I’ve been in and out of the community college system, still trying to find my way. The deepest knowledge I have gained has been by falling on my face and getting back up. As a young mom, I still would have appreciated more help from my parents, programs, or even school. So this Mother’s Day, I ask you to think about helping a young mom get the support and services she needs to make it to her daughter’s or son’s 14th birthday!

“No school district, employee or volunteer thereof, or educational service provider contracting with such school district shall provide abortion services. No school district shall permit any person or entity to offer, sponsor or otherwise furnish in any manner any course materials or instruction relating to human sexuality or sexually transmitted diseases if such person or entity is an abortion services provider, or an employee or volunteer of an abortion services provider.”

Legislators included this language in part to prevent Planned Parenthood from providing age-appropriate sex education in schools—a topic of heated debate in local communities. The bill’s supporters ultimately want to see students taught abstinence-only sex education, despite studies showing that such education methods don’t work in lowering teen pregnancy rates. Beyond the implications to Planned Parenthood as an entity, the bill makes a clear statement: Abortion is bad, anyone who is associated with abortion is bad, school children must be “protected” from these people and their ideas, and abortion providers must be publicly shamed and punished.

If the bill text doesn’t convince you of these facts, then some of the comments made during the hearing should do the trick. As the Huffington Post reports, “[State Rep. J.R.] Claeys said that while he supports volunteerism, he believes ‘it is important that we don’t have people who are advocates for abortion to our children in school settings.'”

Repeat: Abortion is bad, anyone who is associated with abortion is bad, school children must be “protected” from these people and their ideas, and abortion providers must be publicly shamed and punished.

The Lawrence Journal World reports that “[s]tate Rep. Emily Perry, D-Mission, provided an amendment to allow volunteers in the classroom. But state Rep. Allan Rothlisberg, R-Grandview Plaza, opposed it, saying, ‘If we’re having people in our education system, I don’t want them involved in any way, shape or form or manner in killing children, killing babies.'”

Abortion is bad, anyone who is associated with abortion is bad, school children must be “protected” from these people and their ideas, and abortion providers must be publicly shamed and punished.

You get the picture.

At the urging of pro-choice lobbyists, lawmakers eventually agreed to amend the bill, substituting the word “agent” for “volunteer” in one instance, though they refused to change the word “volunteer” elsewhere in the bill. It’s not yet clear what implication that word change will have on enforcing these rules. There will surely be more debate when the bill comes up for a vote of the full House. The point is that they tried. While anti-choice lobbyists stated that the text was from a Missouri bill that passed a few years ago and they meant no harm…the word “volunteer” is not found in the Missouri bill. I believe this makes their true intent clear…they really want to keep “evil doing” supporters of reproductive freedom out of their schools….even mere volunteers.

Meanwhile, other people who really do have the potential to be violent influences on children are free to associate with Kansas schools in any way they please. Let’s take a look at a few such folks from my Wichita, Kansas, community:

Cheryl Sullenger, employed by the radical anti-choice group Operation Rescue, was convicted of attempting to firebomb a California abortion clinic. Her phone number was also found in the car of Scott Roeder, the convicted assassin of the late abortion provider George Tiller.

Local anti-choice zealot Angel Dillard recently gained notoriety after sending a threatening letter to Dr. Mila Means and is currently facing prosecution under the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances (FACE) Act. She recently tried to invoke clergy privileges to keep her conversations with Roeder out of these proceedings.

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, won’t hesitate to befriend (and employ) the most extreme members of the terrorist anti-choice movement. I’m sure he also applauded the work of his friends in Germantown, Maryland, who thought it was appropriate to picket outside of a middle school with a sign that read “Please Stop the Child Killing” and included a photo of a student’s father.

Mark Holick, the man behind the planned “pro-life memorial” in Wichita, recently stood in front of the home of a woman who is attempting to bring abortion care back to Wichita with a sign that read “Where is Your Church?”—an obvious reference to the Tiller murder, which look place in a church.

As I have written previously at RH Reality Check, I am a mother of three school-age children. I am a pro-choice feminist who used to work as a lobbyist for the Kansas National Organization for Women (NOW) and would not hesitate to work for Planned Parenthood or any other abortion provider. I firmly reject the “abortion is bad” school of thought. I also volunteer weekly at my daughter’s middle school, working with a group of young women who are at risk of dropping out. I provide them with moral support and encourage them to develop and employ effective decision-making skills. I celebrate these girls and invite them to realize their maximum potential. They are a joy to me, and I believe they benefit from our relationship.

But it distresses me that anti-choice politics and hatred for women’s reproductive freedom could ever put my relationship with those middle school students at risk. And it distresses me that under the law I could be considered “immoral” for supporting a woman’s right to have an abortion.

There are currently three young women in my middle school group. Statistics show that one of them will have an abortion in her lifetime. My hope is that the none of them will be exposed to shame and harassment surrounding their decisions and that anti-choice legislative efforts will dissipate over time.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/03/13/in-kansas-employees-of-abortion-providers-not-allowed-to-volunteer-at-schools/feed/5Passing the DREAM Act Would Acknowledge the Human Rights of Migrant Children and Benefit All of Ushttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/12/passing-dream-act-would-benefit-society-and-acknowledge-human-rights-migrant-chil/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=passing-dream-act-would-benefit-society-and-acknowledge-human-rights-migrant-chil
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/12/passing-dream-act-would-benefit-society-and-acknowledge-human-rights-migrant-chil/#commentsMon, 12 Nov 2012 09:13:25 +0000While the Maryland ballot initiative on education is great for young migrants in that state, it highlights the fact that federal action is sorely needed to protect the human rights and dignity of migrants everywhere.

]]>November 6th was a good day for human rights, at least in Maryland. Not only did the state’s voters support same-sex marriage, they also voted in favor of expanding access to higher education for all of Maryland’s students, regardless of their immigration status.

While the Maryland ballot initiative on education is great for young migrants in that state, it highlights the fact that federal action is sorely needed to protect the human rights and dignity of migrants everywhere.

There is some good news. In June this year, President Obama signed an executive order preventing the Department of Homeland Security from deporting undocumented immigrants under 30 who came to the United States before they were 16 years old, and who fulfill a number of other criteria regarding their moral standing and education.

However, while this change rightly was hailed as a positive development for hundreds of thousands of young people, it does not overcome the need for legislative action—President Obama himself called it a “stop-gap” measure. In fact, it is now more than decade since a bipartisan initiative proposing similar benefits first was introduced in the Senate under the title “Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.”

The idea behind the original bill—and the various versions of it introduced over the years—was to open the possibility for higher education and ultimately citizenship for noncitizen children of good moral character, regardless of their immigration status.

And the idea is solid. The individuals potentially covered by these bills are already a positive part of their communities, and many know no other home than the United States. They are, for all intents and purposes, Americans in everything but paperwork. Moreover, maintaining the documentary limbo many of them are in does nothing but make it more difficult for them to pay tax, improve their education, or otherwise contribute constructively to society. In other words: refusing to regularize the status of undocumented children risks turning them into the pariahs they never were.

However, since the first DREAM Act was introduced in 2001, and despite the passage of a version of the bill in the House of Representatives in 2010, no final legislation has been approved by both houses. Arguments that the bill would foster illegal immigration or potentially shield gang members do not bear out in reality. For starters, the bill explicitly seeks to exclude those with a criminal background and applies equally to documented and undocumented aliens. Also, from a pragmatic perspective, most people migrate because they can’t provide for their families at home, not because they think they can “pull one over” on their host country. The lack of DREAM Act-like legislation does not make foreign-born children magically disappear or “self-deport.” Rather, it prevents them from fulfilling their potential as participants in society, thus becoming more of a burden than they otherwise would have been: a lose-lose situation if ever there was one.

But even more importantly, education is a human right. Numerous international human rights bodies have repeatedly clarified that states must protect the human rights of those living in their territory, regardless of their legal status. Certainly, states can and must independently determine their immigration and access policies, but they cannot decide whether any one individual has rights: we all do.

Up until this week, 11 states had already adopted their own versions of the DREAM Act, including California, Texas, and New York, all states with large and rapidly growing foreign-born populations. It is telling that states with large immigrant populations know that providing immigrant children with access to higher education only can be beneficial to everyone.

The ballot initiative approved in Maryland this week sends a powerful message to Congress that states are willing to provide, piecemeal, what the federal government should be providing, wholesale. It also underlines the uneven nature of legal protections for immigrants until federal law is passed, especially because immigration generally remains under federal purview. Hopefully, passing a federal DREAM Act is a priority item on the agenda of the new Congress.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/12/passing-dream-act-would-benefit-society-and-acknowledge-human-rights-migrant-chil/feed/0Reflections On My One-Year Anniversary: Latinas Hold the Power and Potential of This Nation’s Futurehttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/02/reflections-on-my-one-year-anniversary-latinas-hold-power-and-potential-this-nati/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=reflections-on-my-one-year-anniversary-latinas-hold-power-and-potential-this-nati
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/02/reflections-on-my-one-year-anniversary-latinas-hold-power-and-potential-this-nati/#commentsFri, 02 Nov 2012 14:50:39 +0000In the whirlwind of policy debates and activist conferences, it is easy to gloss over the victories we’ve accomplished together this past year. As I look forward to my next year, I’m glad to have such powerful hermanas beside me because we still have much work to tackle.

]]>I recently celebrated my first anniversary as the executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH). It’s been quite a year—I’ve traveled to a dozen states, met with everyone from Latina teen moms struggling to make a better life for their children, to DREAMers advocating for a just immigration system, to the President and Vice President of the United States. All while juggling the life of a working mom, often with either baby or breast pump in tow!

In the whirlwind of policy debates and activist conferences, it is easy to gloss over the victories we’ve accomplished together this past year. The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, and the teen birth rate for Latinas declined significantly, indicating that our young women have some improved access to education, contraception and reproductive care. A groundbreaking poll, headed up in part by NLIRH, showed that strong majorities of Latino voters agree that a woman has the right to make her own personal, private decisions about abortion without politicians interfering, dispelling lingering stereotypes about Latino/as and reproductive care.

Throughout all of this important work, I’ve been struck by the incredible activists making all of these achievements possible. I stood outside the Supreme Court steps with an amazing group of Latinas who devoted precious time and energy to making sure their mothers, sisters and friends can access life-saving care. I was inspired by a group of young mothers who shared personal stories with legislators to help them understand the unique parenting challenges they face and how support can enable them to succeed.

Every day these women and women like Lucy Felix, who educates women in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley about how to keep themselves and their families healthy, and Jersey Garcia, who works to mobilize Latinas in Florida to vote against an anti-choice ballot initiative, remind me what can happen when we harness the power of our community and the ballot box. I am inspired by the dedication and courage of the young women we work with, including Gabi Lazzaro, who fearlessly shared her personal story to policymakers on Capitol Hill about having an abortion and being a young mom, while advocating for policies that would ensure that other young mothers receive the support they need to pursue their dreams. I am inspired by Angy Rivera, a DREAMer and reproductive justice activist in New York City, who proudly proclaims that she is ‘undocumented, unapologetic and unafraid’. I know with young mujeres like Gabi and Angy serving as leaders in their communities, the future of this country will be one that is just and equitable.

NLIRH makes connections between issues often seen as disparate: immigration and abortion access, contraceptive equity and race, sexual orientation and reproductive freedom. We’re using every opportunity to make these ties, like highlighting queer undocumented youth and showing the parallel struggle that LGBTQ and immigrant young people face by having to “come out of the closet” twice, both as LGBTQ and undocumented, in honor of National Coming Out Day. One issue cannot be separated from the other for the members of our communities.

Latinos make up the largest and fast growing ethnic group in the United States and over 20 million Latinos are eligible to vote in the 2012 election. Latinas turn out in greater numbers than their male counterparts. There were five majority-minority states in 2011: three of which are dominated by Latinos (California, Texas and New Mexico). By 2050, one in three people will be Latino or Latina. With this in mind, it is important to note that Latina’s issues are the nation’s issues. Like the rest of the country, Latinas are concerned about the economy, health care, education, immigration policy and national security.

As I look forward to my next year, I’m glad to have such powerful hermanas beside me because we still have much work to tackle. Legislators continue to play politics with women’s health by refusing to renew the bi-partisan Violence Against Women Act. Instead, they bicker over small expansions that would protect some of the most vulnerable Latinas. Millions of Latinas are still denied vital reproductive health care under the Affordable Care Act because of immigration status, and draconian immigration policies force millions of women immigrants to live in the shadows, as they fear their families might be needlessly torn apart. Opponents continue to vow to repeal access to contraception and governors are flatly refusing the Medicaid expansion and cutting family planning dollars.

My organization and I are preparing to fight these battles — meeting with legislators on the Hill, training Latinas in Texas, Florida and throughout the country to raise their voices for their rights, and partnering with other organizations who will walk with us toward justice. I am convinced there is power in our collective voice, but only if we use it to demand the ability to keep ourselves and our families healthy.

I’m using my voice to advocate for Latina health, reproductive justice and human rights. I hope you’ll join me in making Latinas even more powerful in the next year. ¡Somos Poderosas! (We are powerful!)

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/02/reflections-on-my-one-year-anniversary-latinas-hold-power-and-potential-this-nati/feed/0The Girl Effect: The Potential of Pakistani Human Rights Defender Malala Yousafazi and Others Like Herhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/01/near-death-pakistani-human-rights-defender-malala-yousafazi-and-girl-effect-0/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=near-death-pakistani-human-rights-defender-malala-yousafazi-and-girl-effect-0
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/01/near-death-pakistani-human-rights-defender-malala-yousafazi-and-girl-effect-0/#commentsThu, 01 Nov 2012 17:29:01 +0000Press reports of the attack on Malala Yousafazi are focused on religious extremism and the Taliban’s crushing hold on some regions in Pakistan. I want to focus not only on Malala but also on how educating girls, one by one, can change the world.

]]>The recent assassination attempt on Malala Yousafazi has been widely covered in the press as she struggles for life after emergency surgery. At the time of this writing, her condition has stabilized and she has been transported from her home of Pakistan to Britain for specialized medical care. Reportedly, she has even taken a few steps in the earliest steps of rehabilitation care.

Press reports of this attack are focused on religious extremism and the Taliban’s crushing hold on some regions in Pakistan. Other coverage is of Malala’s condition as she receives treatment while the world watches and waits for the news of recovery. I want to focus not only on Malala but also on how educating girls, one by one, can change the world.

Malala’s father is an educator, the director of her school—the commitment to education is a clear value of the family. With this energy and enthusiasm, Malala became a spokesperson for the right of girl’s education in Pakistan. Coming to the attention of human rights organizations like UNICEF, Malala inevitably was celebrated not only for her opinion (a child’s right) but also her ability to communicate the issues in eloquent English. When the Taliban announced girls’ attendance in school was abolished in the area of Pakistan where Malala lived, her life and struggle was followed and documented by journalists. Undoubtedly, it was this documentary process and expression of opinion on videotape that, in part, exposed Malala to extreme violence. The Taliban determined Malala to be a threat and her death was ordered to silence the child.

Bravely, Malala participated in a high-profile human rights delegation to her country, giving her own testimony to humanitarian observers. She also met with President Obama’s special envoy to the region. As a child working in these circles of politics and power, Malala declared that she eventually hoped to be a politician in her own country of Pakistan. She saw that route as the way to make a difference on a large scale, ultimately contributing to the social development of her community and country.

Her BBC “Diary of a Pakistani School Girl,” an anonymous blog penned by Malala, will inevitably receive more attention now than ever before. And Malala clearly has made major contributions to human rights discourse—particularly bringing attention to the girls and women of Pakistan. She wrote and spoke out about the right to education while recognizing that the Taliban could, at any time, kidnap and maim or kill her. However, with unbelievable courage she continued to speak out and fight for her right as a girl to be educated.

Malala is brave, without question. Her determination was such that living without her human rights was a greater burden than risking her life to speak out and express her opinion. Her courage was such that she acted on her right to pursue an education, going to school in secrecy while hiding her books and studying in shadows.

Now, as Malala struggles to recover her health, the question is: what can we all do to promote the right for girls and women to freely pursue an education? Frankly, the question is far too simple and the answer is very complex. However, some say that the most important humanitarian and development initiative on a worldwide basis is educating women and girls. And that does require us to think and consider how we can promote female-friendly transnational educational policies and development initiatives.

Sometimes called the “girl effect,” the idea is simple (see video above). Educate a girl and she not only grows personally, but can then share her knowledge and talents in a way that contribute to the quality of life of her family and community. This basic social development concept draws upon the idea that educated girls later become mothers who have healthier children. Many also engage in economic opportunities and take on leadership roles in their communities and greater society. Unleashing a tidal wave of the “girl effect” is without a doubt a critically important component to confronting global poverty, injustice, and oppression.

One critical answer to global inequality and improving quality of life lies in promoting human rights and eliminating the discrimination against vulnerable people—including roughly half the world’s population of girls and women who live in countries without fair and just educational opportunities! So, as we rally for Malala’s recovery let us not forget her courage and determination. To ultimately make a difference in Pakistan and elsewhere, the momentum of Malala’s human rights defense must be carried on. We each have a role in the tidal wave of the girl effect!